


Conversations With My Children

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-18
Updated: 2006-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 22:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The demon's in the east. Kansas is to the west. John thinks he knows which direction he has to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations With My Children

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: during "Home"  
> Disclaimer: They don't belong to me. They belong to Eric Kripke and the CW. No Winchesters were physically wounded during the making of the fanfic.

He was headed east on Interstate 70 when he got the voicemail. Just past Columbus with the sunset burning the clouds to hellfire in the rearview mirror. No time to stop and sleep, not right now, with the reports coming out of Conemaugh. Always one step behind the demon, and he was tired of that, so he'd driven all night, slept a few hours in the afternoon, grabbed a burger at a drive-through.

The road ahead was just two yellow lines and string of tail lights. He wasn't even sure what he was driving by, although after a while every strip mall, fast-food joint, convenience store, car dealership, and crossroad looked exactly the same anyway. So did the stretches of empty fields.

When he turned his cell phone on, it beeped. Keeping his other hand on the wheel, he put the phone it to his ear as the neutral machine-like voice informed him _You have one new message..._

He listened. The truck swerved.

* * *

The decision to save the message after it was done wasn't a decision, it just happened. His thumb hit the button before he could think. Just like when his hands turned the wheel and made the truck take the next exit.

A gas station's lights glowed against the increasing twilight, and beyond that stretched an abandoned lot, then the woods. He followed the road, uncertain of what he needed until he found it. About five miles from the highway, there was just a little spit of a dirt turnoff. The trees were dense there, and if there were any houses, he couldn't see the entrances to the driveways or spot any lights.

John pulled to a stop and allowed the quiet left in the wake of the now silenced engine to soak around him.

He was losing time but he couldn't ignore the exhaustion washing over him anymore; he was just an accident waiting to happen. He put his head down on the steering wheel.

Kansas was to the west. The demon was in the east.

A wind scraped the tree branches against the truck like reaching claws.

He'd sleep just for an hour or so. John sat up and set the cell phone alarm, then put it back on the dashboard. The vinyl seat creaked as he shifted and leaned his head against the cool glass of the window.

Just an hour or so. Demon in the east. Kansas to the west.

He closed his eyes.

* * *

A small sound, oddly familiar, came from beside him on the seat. He opened his eyes.

The baby looked back at him with the biggest darned eyes he'd ever seen, wondering and bright and more aware than most children's usually are at that age.

"Hey," John whispered. He turned in the seat and reached down to pick the infant up gently in his arms. "What are you doing here?"

In answer, the boy grabbed John's jacket with a fierce grip. John lightly tickled his stomach, and the baby giggled. That, too, was familiar.

Then the baby reached out with its other hand, grabbing at John's fingers, and the little face scrunched in distress, although he didn't cry, because he never cried much.

John tried to soothe him, rocking him a little.

The big eyes stared up at him in a silent query.

"I can't," he said. "Try to understand."

The infant's lower lip pouted, but still he didn't cry.

"Why not, Daddy?"

His arms were suddenly empty, and the loss twanged sharp in his chest.

"Because the demon is in the east, kiddo," he explained to the four-year old kneeling on the seat next to him.

"Oh." Dean paused, pressing his lips together thoughtfully. "Didn't you get my message?"

John put the palm of his hand against the boy's round, warm cheek. "Yes, son, I did."

"When why can't you go to Kansas, Daddy?"

An infant's wail filled the truck cab, insistent, demanding, and clear with its wants. Dean was gone, and it was just him and baby Sammy in the truck. John gathered up his infant son, tucking the soft blanket around him.

"It's okay, Sammy, it's okay."

But the baby kept crying. John felt its bottom, but the diaper wasn't wet. Probably he was just hungry, but he didn't have a bottle handy. John put the baby against his shoulder and rubbed the small back. That didn't help either. Sammy just kept on crying.

Helplessly, John held his child close.

"I know, Sammy. But I can't. The demon's in the east. I have to hurry."

This time he almost cried out when his arms were abruptly empty.

"The demon that killed Mom, right?"

Dean slouched next to him in the passenger seat, one jean-clad knee bent, one sneaker on the seat, one dangling down, arms folded.

"Get your feet off the seat, Dean," John said automatically. "Stop kicking. And sit up straight."

Dean immediately obeyed. "I'm with Sam in Lawrence."

"Good," John said, "that's good, son. You look after Sam."

"I do, Daddy. Just like always." The freckled nose wrinkled. "But why can't you go to Kansas?"

"Because we don't want the demon to kill someone else's Mom. I have to stay on him. Remember what I told you about never letting your guard down. The demon's in the east."

The teenager who replaced Dean had legs and arms too long, a head too big for his skinny body. It seemed like he could barely fold himself into the seat.

"That's not an explanation. Tell it to me, Dad, even if you can't tell him." Sam's voice was angry, his brows drawn together. When he smiled, when he was at peace, the boy always looked so much like Mary it hurt, but right now, John knew Sam looked like him.

"It all changed after your mother died," John rested his arms on the steering wheel, looking sideways at his teenaged son. "There's no such thing as 'normal' or 'safe,' Sam. If you know there's something evil out there, you have to hunt it down and kill it, or sooner or later, it'll come back around and threaten your own. I'm doing this for you boys. Everything I've ever done, was for you."

"He's scared. He needs your help."

John angrily smacked the steering wheel with his palms. "He can handle this. He doesn't need me."

"How do you know he doesn't? You don't know anything about him!" Sam's voice rose. In a moment, he'd be shouting. "Why won't you go to Kansas, Dad?"

"The demon's going to kill again."

"I know," Dean said quietly, in a voice that had just finished deepening. "But there's something in our old house." He leaned his elbow against the base of the window.

"Run a surveillance sweep," said John. "Check for EMF. Interview the current residents."

"See, the problem is, I don't --" Dean pushed his fingers up through his spiky hair. "-- I don't know if this thing is what killed Mom or not. I don't know what to do."

"You'll figure it out."

"Will I?" His son turned and looked at him, and John was shocked by the bitterness he heard in Dean's voice. "You sound so certain."

"Because I am. You're a hunter. You just remember what I taught you."

"It's not enough."

"What do you mean, 'enough'?"

"Never mind," Dean muttered, and stared out the window into the darkness.

"He means that just telling him what to do isn't enough." The Sam who turned back next to him in Dean's place was a stranger to him, the Sam he never knew. No longer a child, but not an adult yet either, seen only at a distance carelessly crossing a sunlit quad, or walking alone at night with a tense alertness and grace that made John proud. "Training him, leaving him latitude and longitude coordinates, it's not enough. Sure, he can probably handle this. He might even be able to handle this and keep me alive at the same time." Sam curled his hand into a fist on the knee of his jeans.

"The demon's..."

"...in the east, yeah, Dad, I know," said Dean the adult, rolling his eyes like he was still twelve years old.

"Is Sam right? Is this something you can't handle?"

"You tell me, you're the expert on everything that goes bump in the night. You taught me everything I know. What are we up against here?" Dean tapped his fingers nervously on the dashboard.

The thick silver ring flashed, and John realized he had no idea where Dean had gotten it or what meaning it held for him. Any more than he knew about the pendant hanging around Dean's neck, which John had noticed one day, but not how long it had been there before his noticing.

John stared out through the front windshield, where the trees nestled over the dark road. "Could be a poltergeist," he said.

"Please," said Sam, taller if possible, more self-assured, the hair shaggier.

He flickered. Like an interrupted video transmission, his image jumped and it was back to adult Dean.

His voice was flat and level in a way that didn't seem quite right. "I need your help, Dad."

* * *

John woke with his forehead against the steering wheel, fingers gripping so tight his fingers ached, sweat cold on the back of his neck and trickling down his back.

Fumbling with the door handle, he got outside. The Ohio back road was dark and undisturbed, the trees lashing above his head in the wind of the April night.

With his hands against the back of the truck, head lowered, he breathed deeply until his heart stopped beating like helicopter blades. Used to be he woke up like that all the time, clawing his way from the well of a nightmare, machine-gun fire, blood, and thick green brush. That stopped after Mary died, and the nightmares began to live outside his head.

The luminous face of his watch showed him he'd lost four hours.

He got back in the truck, turned it around. At the gas station he stopped to fill up the tank.

Then John got back onto the Interstate, and headed west.

~end~


End file.
